"Yes, I organised this attack, but not to the extent that it occurred," Pavel Dmitrichenko, looking tired and unkempt, said in a video aired on television.

He said he had confessed his motives to police but declined to detail them on video. Channel One, a state-run television station, said Dmitrichenko's girlfriend, ballerina Angelina Vorontsova, had clashed professionally with the ballet's director, Sergei Filin.

Dmitrichenko, 28, was arrested on Tuesday by police investigating the January attack on Filin, when sulphuric acid was thrown at his face, leaving him fighting for his eyesight.

Dmitrichenko's two accomplices – the attacker and a getaway driver – also confessed, police said on Wednesday.

Suspected driver Andrei Lipatov said: "Yes, I was there at the time [of the attack]. I drove someone. I didn't see how it happened. I just drove him, waited, and drove him away. I was asked to do it, without explanation." Yury Zarutsky, the suspected attacker, declined to comment, in the video.

Filin was returning home late on the evening of 17 January when a masked attacker threw the contents of a jar filled with sulphuric acid at his face. He suffered severe burns to his face and neck and underwent several operations to restore his eyesight and repair his skin. He is currently undergoing further treatment in Germany.

From the beginning, Filin, 42, insisted the attack was linked to his work at the theatre. Filin, backed by the Bolshoi leadership, had clashed publicly with several dancers. Some wanted his job, others wanted more dancing roles, he said.

Katerina Novikova, spokeswoman for the theatre, said on Tuesday that she knew of "no bitter rivalry" between Filin and Dmitrichenko.

Dmitrichenko has been with the Bolshoi since 2002. He made a name for himself by dancing the role of villains, including the role of tsar Ivan the Terrible in the ballet of the same name and the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart in Swan Lake.

Police did not suggest a motive for the attack.

Dmitrichenko is reportedly close to Nikolai Tsiskaridze, the flamboyant principal dancer against whom the Bolshoi leadership had directed much of its wrath as the police investigation unfolded. The theatre's general director, Anatoly Iksanov, accused Tsiskaridze of creating a poisonous atmosphere inside the theatre. Tsiskaridze had repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack on Filin.

Although long plagued by behind-the-scenes drama and intrigue, the Bolshoi theatre had, until January, managed to avoid the violence that has marked conflicts in Russia's business world.

The scandals have been growing ever more dirty and public in recent years, however. Filin's predecessor quit after erotic photos of him were leaked online.

The arrests came after a series of spectacular raids that lasted throughout the day on Tuesday. Police carried out a pre-dawn raid in the Moscow suburb of Stupino, home to a compound of dachas, or summer homes, that belongs to the Bolshoi. They then searched a flat that belongs to Dmitrichenko in the same block of flats in central Moscow where Filin lives and in whose courtyard the attack took place.

The suspected attacker, 35-year-old Zarutsky, was later detained in the Tver region, about 100 miles from Moscow. Police said he had a previous criminal record. Russian media reported that Lipatov, the suspected driver, was unemployed.

Novikova, the Bolshoi's spokeswoman, declined to comment on the arrests. Before the news of Dmitrichenko's arrest emerged, she said the theatre was "glad" that the police investigation had led to an arrest.

She also said she hoped that Filin, whom doctors believe will recover his eyesight, would be back at the Bolshoi in time for the theatre's summer tour to London.

Last week a Bolshoi dancer confessed to ordering a vicious attack on the company's director. His colleagues aren't convinced. Judith Mackrell reports from St Petersburg on the in-fighting and scandals dogging the national art form